Page 230 of Come Back to Me

One arm around me, he growls, “Remind me to spank you later for your complete inability to shut your trap?”

“Spank away! But fuck, don’t get in murderery people’s faces! What were you thinking? And why was it so damn hot?”

“Murderery?” His raspy chuckle gets cut off by his phone when it rings again. “Goddammit. What do they want now?” His arm’s still curved around me, but he picks it up and snarls, “What?”

His sigh is clue enough that it’s work.

As I peer into his eyes, I can see the ice is melting.

And I’m glad.

He might be ‘Dirty Harry’ hot, but I don’t want to have to see that shift in him.

“It’s my afternoon off, Marty, and you know what? The RCMP were so quick to take over this bullshit, then they can have this case too,” he jeers. “You got your wish though, huh? Ready to go back to dealing with kittens in trees?”

I tug on his sweater. “What’s going on?”

“Razer was found outside the station.”

From the tick in his jaw, I don’t think he was delivered in a gift box…

“Dead?”

“Yeah.”

“How did they even get... Man, theyaredumber than a bag of rocks.”

“Not that dumb. The CCTV in a half-mile radius was knocked out. One second, he’s not there. Two minutes later, he is.”

My brows lift. “That means they have a jammer.”

“They were clever enough to use it.”

“Let’s not argue. Those guys were clearly not of the same caliber as the MC Zee’s boss represents.”

“Are we seriously talking about the quality of MC bikers you’ve come across in your life?”

“Bet your ass we are.” I sniff. “Now, I’m a proud Canadian. They let me down. I can say that we do hockey better, that our chips are far superior, but America has us beat on MCs.”

“You know what? I’m not going to complain about that.”

“Paulie and Ricky… I thought they were gay.”

“You’re nosy.”

“Maybe. But still. Dana was with the pair of them?”

“Yeah. We were pretty sure that Paulie and Ricky were gay too. Then, one time they’re back from deployment and Paulie took Ricky home with him. Next thing we knew, they’re both swooning over this Dana chick.”

“Can’t blame them. She’s gorgeous.”

He blows out a breath. “Ricky said he was going to marry her. Paulie wasn’t like that. His upbringing, you know? He preferred things informal. But Ricky didn’t. He’d talk about his plans for the future. Paulie would just roll his eyes, but I knew he was listening. I knew he wanted it too.”

“That’s really sad.”

“I’m so fucking sick of sad.”

I cup his cheek. “Don’t blame you.”

---